


aspiring for empty

by farfetched



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Friends to Lovers, Hanahaki Disease, Happy Ending, Hospitalization, M/M, Temporarily Unrequited Love, Temporary Character Death, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-21
Updated: 2017-06-21
Packaged: 2018-11-16 23:23:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11263167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/farfetched/pseuds/farfetched
Summary: He'snot worth it. Kindaichi knows it, and he's trying.Trying to empty his lungs of love.[Kindaichi gets Hanahaki disease; Kunimi helps however he can. Sometimes the only way to win is to let go.]





	aspiring for empty

He can't breathe. He can't breathe for flowers, petals and leaves cramming their way through his lungs, his throat, spilling over the floor but not gone. 

This is it, he thinks. This is how he dies, aspirating on flowers, a physical manifestation of how life decided to hate him, show him unequivocally that he's not in luck. Not content to let him dream, hopelessly daydream, just imagine it. 

Tears stream from his eyes with the effort of it, the pain of suffocation. His chest heaves with trying to cough, on and on, but there isn't air in his lungs to expel, and he can't breathe, if his eyes were open, perhaps he'd be able to- 

But he can't, and he knows now, knows this is how he dies. 

It's stupid. 

He doesn't want this. He doesn't want any of this, doesn't want to acknowledge what it means, although he doesn't really have to if he dies. 

A hand smacks him on the back, firmly. It shocks more flowers out of his throat, but he still can't breathe, can't hear, and wants, in some way, to just die, and be done with it. 

Collapsing, he just barely feels someone catch him, and shouting, blurry and hard to capture around him. He thinks maybe he's being thrown over someone's shoulder, and the gravity helps pull flowers out, his eyelids fluttering with the weight of oxygen deprivation, the energy to stay awake, because if he sleeps, he won't wake up, and he wants to. He just wants to be free of this. 

He drifts during that time, sometimes with it, sometimes far away from the world. His grasp on consciousness is slippery at best, it squirms and wiggles away from him. He catches odd words, odd sounds; feels himself being put down on something soft. Feels the sparking sensation in his fingers, still not breathing right and depriving his body of oxygen, and he smiles, because it's ridiculous, but now he's dying, he feels kind of calm. Relaxed. Maybe he could just let go, maybe he could just let himself go and not have to worry about this anymore. 

There's lots of noise. He thinks someone asks him questions; he can't think, let alone answer them. More movement, jostling, a high pitched oscillating noise that gets into his head, round and round and round, it hurts, it hurts. 

Eventually, suddenly, something gets stuck down his throat and the obstruction goes, he can breathe, breathing! Sweet oxygen, air, into his deprived lungs, and he chokes on his desperation to fill them. He wants to sit up but he can't; then someone helps him and he breathes and breathes and breathes, tears start streaming down his face again because it hurts, it really, really hurts. But he breathes and he coughs and he throws up, and finally, eventually, it settles. 

When he opens his eyes, he's not outside the gym anymore. 

He has to blink a few times to clear his vision, and wipes furiously at his eyes. Wants to growl, but his throat hurts too much. 

He feels as though a bus might have hit him. He's exhausted, he never thought coughing could be tiring, but his entire chest aches from the effort of it. 

"Are you feeling better?" 

The quiet question adjusts his attention in the room, pulls it towards the companion he didn't know he had. Friend. He huffs very softly, and nods, then, feeling dizziness build up, shakes his head. 

Kunimi's hand is still on his back, now he thinks about it. It is stable and solid in a way that nothing else in the world is; it remains there as he breathes. And breathes, and breathes. 

Then it drops away, reluctantly. 

"Is there... something you wanted to say?" Kunimi asks. 

He considers pretending he didn't hear. His hands grip into fists of the bed sheets, then relax, as he shakes his head. 

He knows what Kunimi wants him to say, to tell him. Suspects that he probably already knows. He doesn't want to believe it though. 

A long sigh. When he glances, Kunimi is staring off into the distance, unreadable expression on his face. 

"She's not worth it, Kindaichi." 

It's barely more than a whisper. It doesn't even look like Kunimi meant to say it, or thought he heard. 

He shakes his head. 

She's not. _He's_ not. 

But he might be.

* * *

In no uncertain terms, he is to get over it. If he does not, he will die. 

It's a good motivator, but it fails in its simplicity; love is not something anyone has much control over. 

It is considered as falling, precisely for that reason. If it were under any reasonable control, it would be called _deciding_ , or _selecting_. 

Since it is not, he can only do his best; although, there are hardly manuals for falling out of love. 

It's not a situation he ever wanted to be in. 

Not the flowers, no; he could have done without those, but they are a symptom to the disease, nothing more. The root cause, the heart of the matter, really, is something he could tell he was doing, and choosing to be ignorant of, never realising it could lead to this. He did not want to fall. For anyone, but not for _him_. He can't, and he knew, he knew anyway, that it had no logical conclusion except death of feelings, he hadn't needed proof, but he had it in the form of choking fits, flowers on flowers on flowers, pitying looks from his teammates (including...) and questions he refuses to answer. 

He didn't need the constant bitter taste on his tongue to tell him it's unrequited. He didn't need the tell-tale roiling in his gut his lungs as they surge up unwanted to know it had nowhere to go but away. He didn't need the hospital visits, the clinics, the psychologists prodding every crevice of his mind, he didn't need any of it to know it was a fool’s errand. 

It irks him, irks him into stamping on those flowers if he has half a speck of energy left once he's done, if he's not choked on it, choked on the ambition his heart has, choked on the hope. 

How can it be if he doesn't want it returned? 

He doesn't want _him_ to know. Doesn't want _him_ to accept, or say yes, or reciprocate. He knows, he knows it wouldn't work, and doesn't want it to work, he's happy where he is with _him_ but his heart had other ideas and pines, unprescribed from his mind, his body, anarchist of the greatest degree in him. 

Kunimi stays beside his anarchist heart the whole time. 

Silently, Kunimi will clean when he is unable to do so himself. Silently, Kunimi will guide him from the gym and pat him on the back. Silently, Kunimi works every day to keep him breathing a little longer, to give him a chance to improve. 

"She's not worth it." Kunimi will deign to remark, quietly, once he's finished. Not always. But often enough. He thinks he's seen a world of emotion that gets promptly shut down. 

" _He_." He remarks back, just once. He's leant aside the bathroom wall, toilet painted in fuschias and bile, a heavy sick feeling in his gut, and his throat aching as always. Kunimi managed to stop it, somehow; but his throat is raw and his heart is too fast, entrapped in its race to poetically end him on its own whims and flights of fancy. 

Kunimi looks at him, gloves on and disinfectant already starting to mask the bitter smell of flowers. 

" _He's_ not worth it." He repeats, merely at a whisper. 

Kunimi doesn't react.  
"No," Kunimi says eventually, returning to cleaning. "He isn't."

* * *

It shapes itself into a begrudging pattern, the push and pull of his heart and his mind, neither conclusively winning the war. Each wins its own battles; the day he sees _him_ in practice and manages to cram flowers back down his windpipe through sheer will alone; the day he returns to hospital on a stretcher with his fingers just going blue, Kunimi gripping them tightly as soon as he is able to. 

The day his heart, his physical heart gives up, can't go on from the lack of oxygen, and they have to draw him back to life, draw the contents from his lungs and give the spark back to his physical heart to make itself beat, and keep beating. 

He doesn't think he's seen Kunimi as white as he did that day. He says nothing about the crushing grip on his hand, or the tears. 

They talk of surgery; of pacemakers, of lung transplants. Of neurosurgery, far too complicated for him to understand. 

But pacemakers only control the symptom. Death is a symptom, a side effect of the true disease. In new lungs he'd grow new flowers, and they all know it; it buys him time, not an escape. 

And neurosurgery can go very wrong. 

_He_ , finally, leaves. 

It gets worse, first, as his heart misses _him_ ; it pushes flowers and flowers and flowers at him, drowns him in tears and choking words; Kunimi calls the ambulance once, twice, three times; sits in the waiting room, ever hopeful of an all clear. Kunimi does not recognise, perhaps, that he wishes of himself the same thing. 

Kunimi gets used to calling the ambulance that summer. 

And always, at the end of an episode: 

"He's not worth it." 

But he knows that. He knows that and he's trying his best. 

It is difficult to fight against himself.

* * *

Second year starts with flower gardens from his lungs and hands gripped tightly most of the time. Kunimi remains impassive in face only; he is scared, scared of loss, of futures. 

He goes to leave, once. He turns back at Kunimi's call, hesitant. Kunimi doesn't look at him, looks at the wall with a vigour unknown to him, and says nothing. 

He watches Kunimi. Kunimi does not watch him, bites his lips and chews it, frustrated tears welling up. A year of this has worn on Kunimi in an entirely different way to him. 

"It's nothing." Kunimi eventually says. 

It is not nothing, he knows that, but he equally doesn't know what it is. He can't question that which he doesn't understand, can't question Kunimi when Kunimi has done no questioning of his own. 

So he turns away from Kunimi, and hopes maybe he'll get to hear that nothing someday.

* * *

Only when a teammate points it out does he notice. 

The flowers have reduced. 

The flower garden, once a meadow, is now a window box and reluctantly shrinking; they wilt, deprived of a sunlight he never gave them. Kunimi has only had to call the ambulance once, a wild surge of rain and sun and a visit coalescing into overwhelming plant growth, filling his lungs and nearly nearly stopping his heart, they say. 

In celebration, he practices, and practices until he is out of breath not due to flowers but genuine exertion, lying on the floor of the gym and grinning because he had forgotten how good exhaustion felt, not connected to flowers and coughing. 

They point out that his abdominal muscles have improved; he laughs. He stops, and frowns, when Kunimi turns away; his receding back seems somewhat small and untouchable. 

Later, he hears a cough in the corridor, but no one is there.

* * *

The flowers inside transfer to outside; Kunimi no longer has to call the ambulance or clean up after him, and with that, Kunimi withdraws, a family summer trip spanning most of his summer taking his time, his energy. 

Kunimi withdraws. 

He feels the space left behind. 

It is invisible; it forms itself in a silent presence, a hand on his back, stained with the scent of cleaning fluid once more. It swells into hands clamped around his, a face so white he wants to touch it, to check it still exists. But with the return of colour is the absence of seeing it; the clock drops seconds like water from a leaking tap, slow, but steady, each one bringing him closer to home, closer to him. 

With it, he waits. 

Drip, drip, drip. 

The seconds change; the minutes, the hours. But nothing else. He does his summer homework looking at the clock, at the bathroom, ready to run there, to start all over again. 

But his lungs remain barren of plant life, flowers rooted deep in his heart now do not spring forth to choke him, and he has to wonder what it means. 

Is he worth it? 

Drip, drip, drip. 

Kunimi is worth everything. Kunimi is strength, quiet and stubborn. Unyielding. Kunimi is coming back to life and finding his hand held tightly. Kunimi is forgiveness, help, and help beyond what he knows. Kunimi is getting in trouble to take the attention off him, expending the effort to make him comfortable, to keep him alive and well. Kunimi is a pillar in over a year of crumbling foundations, is constancy in an earthquake, is a shrine in which to hide from the rain. Kunimi is a blessing, a curse, a friend, a foe, and yet none of those things, because Kunimi is Kunimi. 

Kunimi is worth every drip of time he waits for his return. 

Drip, drip, drip.

* * *

In the waiting rain of fall, Kunimi returns.  
He seeks him out; finds Kunimi on a bench near a bakery, nothing in his hands to show a purchase, and nothing to distract them when he sits down next to him. 

"He wasn't worth it." Kunimi says; he thinks he's worked it out, but that's fine. Silent questions are fine. 

"But you are."  
He says, certain of himself. Kunimi looks at him, and keeps looking; imagining, perhaps, whether he dreamt those words from his lips, or whether they'd been said. 

Time has stopped dripping. The glass is full, and he is ready to knock it over, to celebrate barren fields for lungs, to celebrate the end of one-one-nine on the phone, to celebrate all that lies between them, and covering the distance. 

A slow approach tells him worry is unfounded; mutual movement tells him it is reciprocated. It tastes sweet, unlike flowers, unlike bile and unrequited and never-wanted. 

Kunimi tastes nothing like flowers. Kunimi tastes like forever, tastes like home, like sunshine and rain and fresh, fresh air. Kunimi tastes like a promise they both want to make. 

_No flowers_. 

In that moment, they sign a treaty; they renew their vows with every meeting, every hand held in another, every pleasant drowning, every word, whispered or shouted. 

_No flowers_. 

Kunimi tastes like kept promises. Kunimi tastes like freedom, and shouting love in every silence. 

Kunimi tastes nothing like flowers. 

Kindaichi is happy.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope it wasn't too confusing, feel free to ask if you want any further explanation! Hope you liked it though, and thank you for reading!


End file.
